The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has emerged as a driving force behind the current surge of innovation at America’s public schools, according to The Washington Post.

The Seattle grant maker, America’s largest philanthropy, has pledged more than $650-milion over the past two and a half years to schools and other organizations that hew to its goals for education. The foundation’s biggest grants are supporting experiments in how teachers are evaluated and paid.

However, the Gates foundation is only one of several grant makers looking to bolster efforts by the Obama administration to encourage innovation at America’s public schools, according to The Chronicle.

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